The Night of the Font Of Youth
by Gunney
Summary: The sudden appearance of dozens of children in a mining town have drawn the attention of Arte and Jim, but the partners arrive separately, and when Arte arrives, he finds Jim mysteriously missing.
1. Chapter 1

_Darkness._

 _Darkness had always been his friend. It started from his birth. He had been born in the dark, early in the morning, and it was only that dim, pre-dawn darkness that had saved him from being dashed against the rocks. It must have been, because he had been born deformed and he had survived his birth._

 _Uglier than the sins his mother had committed, or would commit when she finally abandoned him, he had found the light of day brought only jeers, hateful stares, shocked faces, and pain. Candle light was kinder, but the darkness, deep and protective, and cool. It was kindest of all._

 _He went to where he could stay in darkness most of the time, and solitude all of the time, and found a way to survive, and live. Making friends with creatures that had no eyes to see him, or else no words to sear him with, nor hands to throw rocks._

 _It was there in the darkness that the Doctor found him. It was there that he discovered his second-birth._

* * *

Camp Grant in north-western California reminded Artemus Gordon, Secret Service Agent, of the Ozarks the moment he stepped off the train. Situated on the Eel River and one of many settlements built on the profits from logging camps, it was a community full of hard men and even harder women. There was no school or church in Camp Grant, though some men chose to worship in a tent that was re-purposed every Sunday. On Saturday nights the tent was usually where the drunks were deposited if they were too sloshed to find their way home. Camp Grant was not a place where one expected to find a great deal of children, and yet that was precisely the topic of the first telegram Arte received from his partner the day he left New York City.

"Fourteen children, all male, ages 6 to 9 appeared throughout last month in mining town called Camp Grant. Rumors of similar appearances in other towns nearby. Will investigate. Children have limited recall. Some were able to give names. No relations here."

Personal matters had kept Arte in New York for a week while his partner went ahead with The Wanderer, forcing Arte to find other travel accommodations. Before his train left Vanderbilt's Grand Station Arte sent a response to Camp Grant that included his traveling schedule for the next week. He rode through the day and overnight in the discomfort of a passenger car, and the following morning found another wire waiting for him when he disembarked in Chicago, Illinois.

"Two months ago five children appeared in town of Junction City, 4 males, 1 female, ages 6 to 10. Similar partial amnesia. One child succumbed to fever, others were taken to orphanage in Eureka."

Before boarding again Arte visited the Chicago Public Library and consulted an atlas, locating the towns of Eureka, Camp Grant and Junction City. Eureka, which would be his first destination, was a coastal town providing a final outlet for the product of the logging towns in the mountains, of which Camp Grant and Junction City were two. All three municipalities followed the general path of the Eel River.

Before leaving the windy city, Arte sent a response to his partner and a wire to the orphanage in Eureka requesting that any information concerning recently inducted orphans be prepared for his arrival in a handful of days.

Out of Chicago he managed to find a berth that allowed him a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, changing trains in Kansas City for the long haul up to Denver. In Colorado he only had time to collect the two wires waiting for him, before the train was once more pulling out, headed to Salt Lake City.

In the dining car, over a cup of the finest coffee he had tasted in weeks, Arte read the telegrams. The first said; "Douglas City residents claim no children appearing in past five months. Bed Rock and Trinity Center report same. Trinity Center report disappearance of two adult males five months prior, claim bear activity at same time. No other activity out of the ordinary. Returning to Camp Grant. Will meet in Eureka in two days."

If he recalled correctly, Douglas City, Bed Rock and Trinity Center were also logging towns but farther north in the county, and following the path of a different river.

The second wire read, "Douglas City resident claims to have spotted 7 foot giant and 4 foot dwarf outside of town several weeks ago. Loveless likely to be in the area."

* * *

 _Loveless. That had been the Doctor's name._

 _He found that he liked the little man's presence. He liked the way that the Doctor didn't look the same as all other men. Nor did he SEE the same. Instead of seeing a freak, to be feared and attacked, the Doctor saw a young man with remarkable talent, here-to-for undiscovered, and encouraged him._

 _His appearance no longer mattered. What he could do, DID._

 _"And oh the things we will do!" The Doctor crowed, and his big, equally not-normal friend would laugh joyously with the little king._

 _He quickly stopped calling the small genius, Loveless. He found it hard to believe that the man was without love._

 _He loved the doctor, as a son would love the first father to show kindness to him._

* * *

From Salt Lake Gordon had two more days of travel at the least, three at the most, depending on the reliability of the local railroads once he got into the mountains. It was fatiguing, this 'public travel' and Arte realized yet again how spoiled he and his partner were with the private train Uncle Sam had been good enough to provide. He spent his evening in Salt Lake City in the good graces of the Mother Superior of a local convent; an old friend of his, who with great consideration offered him a room and a meal. There, he was reunited briefly with two of the newest novitiate, women who had come west as part of a wagon train of mail-order brides. They were good enough to share what news they had of the other members of their group.

Before Arte boarded the train the following morning he had been sent a final telegram from his partner.

It read: "Will rendezvous in Eureka tomorrow. Have found orphan aged 16, last memory is of cave in northern mountains. Investigating today."

Arte arrived in Eureka to find it brimming with the logging trade, kissed by sea spray and turning itself into the beginnings of a fine hub city. Arte asked after The Wanderer at the station but was told that it had not yet arrived, nor had anyone been given news about the train's arrival. It was early yet in the day and Arte decided to check in at the Eureka Home For Wayward Children.

There was little to the home, but the head of the orphanage, Father Uriah Gregory was good enough to introduce Arte to the four orphans that they had received from Junction City. The three young men, and the one young woman, regarded him with open curiosity and some trepidation but could tell him next to nothing about how they ended up in a logging town, who their parents had been, or why they had been abandoned.

Before he left to return to the train station, Arte spent an hour in private with Father Gregory discussing the behavior of the children.

"Nothing out of the ordinary, certainly, Mr. Gordon. The children are quiet, and well-behaved. Lonely. The eldest, who says he is 10 years of age, shows remarkable aptitude with carpentry, but I would hardly consider that strange."

"And the other children, Father. Were you aware that there had been more discovered before these, and since?"

The Father nodded, clasping his hands in front of him, "Yes...there was mention of a pair of children appearing in the town of Guerneville, California, but...that was some time ago. Almost a year. Ours is not the nearest orphanage but it is the biggest. There was talk of having the children sent here but I understood that they had been adopted. I hardly think their case would be related to yours."

Arte opened his mouth to correct the Father's assumption, then closed it, realizing that in essence his question had been answered. He thanked the man and left, promising to return once he had answers.

When he returned to the train station, The Wanderer still had not appeared. Surprised Arte tried sending a wire, but got no response.

Some persuasive swindling got him a seat on a train heading into the mountains and Arte spent the next two hours anxiously urging the train to move faster as it climbed to 1,000 feet above sea level.

* * *

 _Their work began quietly. Much secrecy was necessary and for that reason he was permitted to stay in his cool and dark home. He worked day and night, expanding his sanctuary like a mole expecting a new litter, and the Doctor would come to visit, bringing equipment, or boxes stuffed with paper and fragile vials of chemicals._

 _He wasn't permitted to touch the equipment, not until the Doctor had arranged it just so, and his rapidly evolving home was soon stuffed with the things that a mastermind needed to change the world._

 _But what would they do to change the world, he wondered?_

 _The Doctor responded to the question with a dazzling smile, and a hooting laugh that rang through the open darkness, then held up a gloved finger and pointed to the latest shipment. It had been marked on with charcoal, a single phrase in Latin that he could not read._

 _The Doctor spoke it, relishing in the words the way a child lapped up melting ice cream. "Fons adulescentia." He said, then giggled lightly, drawing in a breath that encompassed a wonder he could not yet comprehend. "The font of youth, my dear boy." The Doctor said, grinning so hard that his bright white teeth creaked. "The font of youth."_

* * *

The narrow gauge line took Arte to Camp Grant, where he found Orrin and The Wanderer, but no Jim. West had left with the teenaged orphan two days ago and had not returned.

Together Arte and Orrin searched through the maps and papers scattered over the desk in the varnish car, squinting at Jim's scribbles and another set of handwriting until Arte had a fairly good idea of where Jim had gone.

"He said 'a cave in the northern mountains', that has to be this river valley here. That's...almost fifty miles away. He took both horses?" Arte asked and Orrin nodded.

"He full expected to be back by now though, Mr. Gordon. The only thing I could figure was weather maybe, or somethin' happenin' to one of the horses."

"We'll give him until tomorrow..." Arte said after a long moment of thought. The case had seemed benign enough at the beginning, even with the knowledge that Loveless was likely involved.

Of course the idea of Loveless and children together in the same nefarious plot seemed peculiar at best.

"What would the Doctor want with children?" Arte muttered aloud. Orrin gave him a mildly panicked, wide-eyed look and cleared his throat.

"Children...uh...perhaps he...wanted their parents?"

"Perhaps, but separating children from their parents does not cause amnesia, at least not in so wide-spread a case. And these children are appearing in all of these towns...not even towns, logging camps. You just don't find children in logging camps. These are redwood forests, are they not?"

"The giant reds." Orrin said crossing his arms over his chest.

"Huh..."

"Mr. Gordon?"

Arte glanced up then took a breath and sat down on the chair behind the desk, his hand laying against the overlapping maps stacked on the desk. "Our dear nemesis, Doctor Loveless has many quirks about him. He is not purely evil necessarily, but he always has a plan. A motivation. Usually that motivation is dominance...over California, the United States, the world. His other most prominent concern has always been for the environment. Saving it from...the evils of mankind."

Arte searched through the papers on the desk, not finding what he was looking for. He stood, walking to the small library that covered one wall with recessed shelves. He scanned the titles of the brown, leather-bound volumes, tipping one from the shelf with a single finger laid against the top of the binding.

"This is the botanical survey done for northern California in 1850. Redwoods then were just beginning to be harvested by industrial entrepreneurs, most of which are millionaires by now." Arte brought the book back to the desk and leafed through it, poking at a page halfway through. "Redwoods are massive trees, in girth and height, slow to mature. Slow to grow." Arte paused, taking in a deep breath as he realized, "Much of the old growth forest in the area, according to this map...is already gone."

Arte felt Orrin lean in over his shoulder and both men stared in surprise at the markings in the book from thirty years prior, as compared to the most recent map of the area. "There should be hundreds of thousands of trees where Camp Grant sits now." Arte said quietly. Conservation had never meant much to him in the past. He was intelligent enough to know that progress came at a cost, but he had not fully considered the price until a few years ago when Loveless' own maniacal campaign to save the forests, came to light.

Since then he'd begun to lean just a little in the direction of the diminutive doctor. Now, he thought, he almost agreed with the man. There was little doubt in his mind that the Doctor's goal had something to do with slowing the almost unstoppable progress of the lumber mills in the Redwood forests. Arte didn't know how, though, or how the children were involved.

He gnawed at his lower lip for a few seconds, feeling the urge to get out there, building in his chest.

"How long has Jim been gone?"

"Two days, sir." Orrin repeated, after thinking for a moment.

It was just after noon but the more Arte thought about it, the less he liked the idea of letting another night pass without making some effort to find his partner. "Orrin, if you would be good enough to find me a horse and a supply mule. I think it's time I went looking for the wayward Mr. West after all."

"Be happy to, sir." Orrin acknowledged.

* * *

 _Over the next month he, the giant known as Voltaire, and the Doctor, worked day and night, by flickering candlelight to ready defenses around his home._

 _Boy, that was the name that the Doctor called him, and so he adopted it, was quick to ask the question 'why' at the first opportunity. Boy knew that the Doctor liked questions when they were cleverly and quickly asked, and he listened as the Doctor happily explained._

 _"There are those, my Boy, who don't understand Nature as you and I do." The Doctor began, then paused, pursing his lips. "You know the difference between right and wrong?" The Doctor asked, opening his eyes a little wider and ducking his head as he looked earnestly into Boy's widened eyes._

 _The deformed man nodded, one eye rounder than the other, but both completely focused on the diminutive scientest._

 _"There are some..who don't." The Doctor said, clenching his teeth together behind lips that were suddenly pressed white. "There are some, who no matter how many times they have been warned, continue to interfere, time and time again. They fool around in matters that are not their concern and despite much trial and error, refuse to be waylaid, or defeated...these...ENEMIES..." the Doctor bit out the word with such venom and hatred that Boy shrunk out of the immediate circle of light cast about the Doctor, taking comfort from his rage in the shadows of Boy's childhood._

 _The Doctor, his eyes for a moment cold, distant and hard, finally took a breath, compassion entering his gaze, which beckoned for Boy to return to the light. "They are the evil, my Boy. But we, we are the good. We are here to do what we must to stop this terrible blight upon nature, and restore her former glory."_

 _Boy's smile, cracking over uneven and badly decayed teeth, one corner of his lips melting into his cheek as though he were made of wax that had been laid too near a flame, never the less was met by a look of patriarchal pride from the Doctor. "Yes." The Doctor agreed, nodding, "But for now...we've much work, and much experimentation to do."_

* * *

An hour later Artemus Gordon had packed supplies enough for himself and two other men for four days, most of it in the saddle bags draped over the back of the mule Orrin had procured. The horse Orrin had bought was a little more spirited...no to be honest the horse was green, barely green broke and docile only because the man who sold it had been plying the animal with whiskey for the past two days. But it was the best Orrin could do on such short notice in a town that did not see much in the way of business in November.

In the hour that Orrin had been gone Arte had tried to track down the fourteen children that Jim had mentioned in his first telegram. So many youngsters, appearing over the period of a month, was impossible to ignore. The children had each been put on trains days after they were discovered and sent to Eureka, but no one in Eureka could confirm their arrival. Either the children had left the train themselves on one of the stops between Camp Grant and the coast, or they had been removed from the train.

Arte had sent out a telegram to each of the train stops along the line asking if anyone had spotted men answering to the descriptions of Loveless and Voltaire. By the time Orrin had returned, Gordon hadn't received any responses...beyond sarcasm and disbelief that is. He told Orrin to keep track of the telegraph, as always, and took the maps, mounting the fidgety horse and heading into the mountains.

It was cold, but not bitterly so, and there was little wind. The sun was bright enough overhead to warm the day, and Arte soon found himself enjoying the trip to a degree. The horse settled the farther they got from civilization, and Arte was left with nothing but hillsides full of saplings, redwood stumps and overgrown weeds and thorns to stare at for miles. Only after he turned away from the logging roads and through a narrow pass wedged with pines, did Arte begin to see the forest as it had been created. The contrast was remarkable and devastating.

Arte found himself drifting into the mind of Doctor Migelito Loveless. A man convinced that the state of California was his birthright. Watching as mankind plundered it for its riches, scrambled over its surface for land, and power. Loveless had once referred to his own henchmen as nothing more than ants, and Arte imagined that the dwarf felt the same way about all of his enemies. Insidious, infectious bugs that he could squash one at a time, but couldn't stop in a swarm.

And Gordon and West were the two cockroaches that wouldn't die.

By 2 pm Arte had covered very little ground, most of the time spent climbing. The elevation ahead would remain relatively steady at just over 2,000 feet, however, and after feeding himself and allowing the animals to drink, Arte continued along the trail, faint as it was, that his partner had taken only days ago.

Night fell quickly around five pm and Arte was forced to stop early to hunt down shelter and firewood. It wasn't eight o'clock before a storm rolled in over the mountains dumping cold rain mixed with sleet. The overhang that Arte had claimed for the night became crowded with the mule and the horse under the shelter with him. By 1 am the rain had stopped but the constant snuffle of a bear nearby, finding food in the final days before hibernation, spooked both animals enough to keep Arte awake the rest of the night.

By first light Arte had eaten breakfast, doused his fire and packed both animals for travel. A few hours before noon Arte found the cave. Sixty yards away, and thirty feet down in a river canyon buried in fall leaves and a crust of frost the sun hadn't reached yet, the cave was dark and deserted. There were no horses, nor signs of them, that Arte could see from where he crouched behind a rock on an overlook. He hadn't smelled any smoke from a campfire, or heard a single human voice but his own.

It felt like a trap, and Arte imagined that his partner had gone through the same calculations in his mind before approaching the cave. Something that Gordon knew he was going to do regardless of the danger. When he finally made the decision to approach it was after he had done everything he could to prepare. Primarily he unloaded the supplies from both animals and loosely ground hitched them where they could reach water that pooled on a flat expanse of rock. If a bear or other predator approached the animals, he wanted them to be able to run, but didn't particularly want to lose the supplies as well.

Arte armed himself, grabbed a lantern, candles, matches and a coil of rope and took his time descending into the valley. He startled a handful of deer and two river otters, but found no large predators in the area. The cave might have housed something preparing for winter, and Arte was cautious as he entered, lighting the candle in the lantern and holding it high over head.

The cave was deep, extending far beyond the reach of the candle light. Arte scanned the soft sand that made up the floor of the entrance of the cave. There were boot prints, one set belonging most definitely to his partner, and another probably to the teenager he had taken with him. Deer tracks, bird tracks and paw prints likely belonging to timber wolves peppered the rest of the sand, but none looked as defined or recent as the boot prints. His partner had entered the cave...Arte felt his stomach turn, and the first hint of fear peppered his mind.

What had kept his partner from leaving?

* * *

 _It was a cave mouse that alerted him. They had been trained to race through their tiny tunnels whenever a visitor was near the cave entrance and Walter, his favorite mouse, did precisely as he was trained, ringing a dainty bell and receiving a treat of cheese and butter for a reward. Someone at the door. A visitor. A prospective patient?_

 _A few more moments of watching an amber liquid boil, watching as the color deepened and the liquid became more viscous, and Boy would be free to investigate the disturbance himself. The Doctor would be pleased, oh yes. A very important part of the plan had gone perfectly, and the Doctor would be getting even more practice soon. The little man would dance and sing tonight!_


	2. Chapter 2

The cave echoed back at him as Artemus entered, his breath loud against the cold walls. The light of his candle did only so much against the gloom and the analytical side of his brain started to invent a device that would solve that problem. An invention that would magnify the light power of a candle ten fold. Something he would have to survive this little adventure to invent, he told himself, and kept moving forward.

The walls narrowed quickly, dropping down from almost twenty feet at the mouth of the cave to ten, eight, then six feet, crushing in at the sides. The delta like spread of water that had branched into the riverbank, tapered into a lightly flowing stream that flooded the floor of the cave as the walls closed in. He was soon forced to hold the lantern directly over his head, the rope down against his side, walking nearly sideways before he was given a little more breathing room he wasn't entirely certain he would reach. Arte pressed through three similar slender passages before the cavern opened up again.

The new 'room' was larger than the entrance had been and sported three distinct openings around its circumference. It wasn't until Arte got closer that he noticed the pick marks. Excavation tools had been used to widen the natural openings in the rock wall, to make the tunnels that branched off more uniform. In fact great detail had been put into making the three branches look as identical as possible. As if the miner in charge of the devilish doings had intended for whoever followed to get lost.

The water that flowed through the cave was coming from the central passage opposite where Arte had entered, and there was a slight breeze brushing past Gordon, in a hurry to escape to the outside world. Arte marked the passage he had just come from with several wide strokes of wax from one of the spare candles. Under the lamp light the candle wax was distinctive against the wall of the cave.

The most obvious next step was to backtrack the path of the runoff trickling through the cave. Instead Arte chose the tunnel on his left and followed it until it dead ended in a small rounded space. This tunnel was hardly natural, and the marks of the pick axe were pockmarked with holes for dynamite, and the black sweeping marks left over from dynamite blasts. A decoy, pure and simple.

Something to waste his time, Arte thought, and when he returned to the large cavern he marked the wall by the tunnel with wax, checked on his first wax mark, then chose the tunnel on the right.

He expected a similar waste of time and had gone forty feet down the winding passage before he realized just how severely the tunnel was beginning to slope. Worse, a trickle of water from somewhere had turned the floor of the passage into a slick, foul smelling mud and Arte was beginning to lose his purchase with every other step. When his foot slipped and he almost lost the lantern Arte slowed his forward momentum to a halt, wedged his left heel into a cranny and pressed his shoulders back against the wall, resting for a moment.

As he caught his breath he flashed the light around the narrow tunnel inspecting the walls and floor. There were no chisel marks, and he couldn't remember when he had last noticed any. Ahead he expected to find a gradual decline of mud and wet stone. Instead, five feet away from where he had stopped, the passage ended in a wide, open hole.

"Of course there's a giant pit at the end of the slippery dark tunnel..." He chided himself, then shifted so that he could cast some of the light into the hole. The light was reflected back toward him, flickering off of a hundred different surfaces. Arte edged closer, still keeping his foot wedged in the cranny, and met the open eyes of a bear. He flinched, but didn't draw back, realizing a second later that the bear was dead, speared through on half a dozen roughly made wooden poles that had been sharpened to a needle point. A crude trap, and probably a few months old. The corpse, however, was quite fresh.

On the other side of the deadly pit, the tunnel continued, but Arte could see no reason to pursue it. Getting back up the slick incline was going to be challenge enough. He was pulling his foot free and turning to the task when he heard a child's voice reverberating faintly down the tunnel. "Hello!?"

There was so much rock that Arte wasn't sure at first if the voice had come from further down the tunnel, or from the main chamber above. After a moment he responded in kind, shouting, "Hello!" Following the quiet repetition of his voice Arte heard what sounded at first like a cat's purr, rumbling through the rock around him. As the sound died he heard the young voice calling again. "Can somebody help me?"

"I'm here!" Arte shouted, "I can help you, where are you?"

In the silence Arte could hear water dripping, a sound that he didn't remember hearing on the way down. The purring sound followed then the young voice shouted over it all. "I'm in a cave. It's cold and wet!"

Arte sighed softly, then called, "Are you hurt at all?"

"My arm hurts, real bad. And there's a girl here." The sound of mild revulsion in the voice told Arte that he was speaking to a boy, and he smirked just a little, pressing his hand against the wall. To his surprise there was the slightest of vibrations feeding through the stone. Not a good sign.

"How big is the cave you're in?" Arte called, praying that the voice was indeed filtering down from the main cavern, and not from beyond the insurmountable pit full of spikes in front of him.

"Really big!" The voice filtered down, "And there are tunnels!"

Arte turned away from the pit and took his first step carefully, digging his heel hard into the mud and shifting his balance with the fingertips of one hand wedged into a break in the stone wall. The mud gave a little, but held long enough for him to repeat the process with his other foot. He'd taken three steps before his foot slipped and he went down hard on his stomach, the front of his clothes instantly soaked through with the wet mud.

"Should I go down one of them?" The voice came from above and Arte shouted, "No!" and felt the walls around him shudder. "Just talk to me until I find you." Arte pushed himself to his knees then getting his feet under him, and once more tried to navigate the slick floor as quickly as possible. The purring sound had turned into a louder, constant rumble, heralding a natural phenomenon that he knew this part of the country was especially susceptible to.

"What should I say?"

"The young lady with you, is she alright?" Arte called. He didn't dare put as much store in the shifting mud, and found that the surest way to travel was to straddle the floor of the tunnel, pressing his feet into the irregular formations where the rock walls met.

"She's sleeping...I think." The voice said, and Arte could hear the beginnings of the slightest note of despair in the boy's voice.

"What's your name, son?" Arte called.

"Jimmy!" The boy shouted back, and Arte couldn't help but smirk. He'd found a Jim, even if it wasn't the Jim he'd been looking for.

"Hang on, Jimmy, I'm almost to you." Arte shouted, sensing the breeze from the larger cavern even before he noticed the slight change in ambient light.

The tunnel began to flatten out again, the sand and rock drying out, giving Arte better purchase and easier travel. The dripping sound was fading as well, though the walls of the tunnel had been twice as damp as they had been on the way down.

He walked as fast as he could, leaving the tunnel in the same moment that the low rumble became a terrifying quake. Arte hastened his pace, running to the two children who were situated in the middle of the large cavern, covered in mud and caked in dust.

The boy could not have been more than seven and the girl younger, four or five, perhaps. The girl's dress, and the boy's shirt and pants were ripped, moth eaten and wet, and Arte could see that the boy's forearm was slicked with blood. He scooped up the girl without wasting much time on formalities. The way out was going to require squeezing through at least three very narrow passages, and they would only get narrower with the cavern shaking the way it was.

"Come along, Jimmy, on your feet." Arte encouraged and pointed the boy down the middle passage, marked by two strokes of candle wax. Light colored eyes met his through the caked muck on his face, before the boy nodded and ran ahead.

The quaking and shuddering held steady as they moved, the little boy scrambling over a small jumble of stone with remarkable grace for a child his age. Not grace, Arte thought, but adrenaline coupled with the fearlessness of youth. They navigated the first narrow passage with relative ease, the tunnel opening up for about forty yards before it began to narrow again. The light should have been getting brighter, at least a little, but it wasn't, setting off an alarm in the back of Arte's mind.

When Arte realized that he was sweating but could no longer feel the cool breeze, he shouted at Jimmy to stop before the youngster stepped into the second narrow cleft. The boy turned, eyes glinting against the pale light of the candle.

"I think the way is blocked. Stay here with her a moment." Arte ordered, setting the girl down and giving the boy a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder before he pressed past him and started into the passage.

With the walls so tight around him he could feel the mountain vibrating. Whatever was causing the quake was holding back, like a man suppressing a giggle at a funeral. It was going to let loose, but there would be no predicting it. And the passage wasn't getting any brighter.

If the way to the river was shut off already, Arte didn't want falling debris to seal them in the tunnels with no water. The airflow from the fourth tunnel, the one he had not tried, seemed to at least suggest that there was another way out. Arte hated playing the odds, but it truly was a game of chance at this point. Either he risked the narrow passage, or he put his hopes on the tunnel he hadn't yet tried.

The vibrations of the wall turned into an unsettling roar that showered debris on his head and Arte backed out of the narrow chute as quickly as he could, tripping and sprawling backwards into the wider tunnel, barely avoiding trodding over the two children. His decision made for him, Arte gathered up the girl and pointed Jimmy back the way they had come.

They navigated the narrow spot once more before the boy vaulted into the large open cavern, Arte hard on his trail.

"Do you remember which tunnel you came from?" Arte asked loudly, thinking that if the boy had come from the fourth tunnel he might know a little of what lay ahead. All he got was a slightly panicked shake of the head. The boy was lost, and Arte couldn't blame him. Rocks the size of his fist were starting to fall from the walls, landing with wet splats on the cave floor.

"Straight ahead then, get going." Arte ordered and Jimmy raced forward, disappearing into the tunnel, his roughly shod feet splashing into the stream that collected there. Arte had just ducked into the tunnel after him, when the main wave hit.

It felt as if the cave had been placed on the down side of a teeter totter and a mean giant had come along and leapt onto the up-side, tossing them in the air. Arte flew up and to the left, felt his shoulder and the side of his head impact the stone wall, his left ear ringing at the impact, then he was dumped back on the tunnel floor, slamming a knee into something hard and unforgiving. He heard the glass of the lantern shatter, and was distantly grateful that it contained a candle and not karosene. He did everything in his power to keep the girl in his arms from taking the brunt of his weight, and forced himself once more to his feet, calling for Jimmy over the roar of the quake.

Arte lurched ahead in the sudden darkness, the broken light now lost somewhere in the mix, keeping one hand ahead of him. When his fingers encountered roughly woven cloth Arte clamped down and felt Jimmy's hands dig into his forearm.

The shaking dwindled, the walls settling, groaning. The flow of the stream had changed, ebbing. Arte loosened his grip on the boy and patted his pockets for a spare candle until he realized that he still had the lantern, the flame had just gone out. He located a waterproofed match and struck it to life, carefully avoiding the jagged glass and lighting the candle again.

"At least we have light," Arte said, "at the absolute least." His left ear was ringing so loudly he could barely hear his own voice.

The tunnel ahead was clear, littered with pock marks from falling stones, but the structure had not collapsed and Arte handed the lantern to the boy and urged him on ahead. Jimmy's face was streaked with two fresh paths through the caked mud, grooves carved by tears, but he gave Arte a reassuring nod, the nod of a brave seven-year-old given an adult task, and ventured forward, frequently checking over his shoulder to make sure Arte was keeping pace.

As he walked, or rather limped on a now throbbing knee, Arte looked over the little girl. She seemed unharmed but for a goose egg that he could feel on the back of her head, and he could sense and hear her breathing. She was wet and cold, but there was nothing he could do at the moment to remedy that problem.

Jimmy was picking his way slowly but steadily up ahead of him, but Arte asked anyway, "You alright, Jimmy?"

Jimmy paused, one foot perched on a rock half his size, and looked back, breathing heavily. "I'm...I'm scared, mister."

Arte stopped as well, leaning against the cave wall, surprised suddenly at how hard his chest was heaving. He was scared too, he realized, but it had been so deeply buried under concern for the children, and duty, and all the other rediculous reasons he'd built up over the years for continuing this job, he hadn't noticed it.

"Yeah..." He said, forcing deeper breaths down his throat. "That's a good sign of a sane mind..." He muttered, and resettled the girl in his arms.

"Is she okay?" Jimmy asked, and Arte smiled again. She may have been a despised 'girl' but obviously the boy still cared.

"She'll be alright, I think, Jimmy. Is this your sister?" Arte asked.

"No. I don't got a sister." Was the boy's response before he turned and climbed over the large stone, then waited on the other side with the lantern held high."I don't think I got a sister."

The obstruction Jimmy had climbed over turned out to be the new addition to the tunnel that had dammed up the stream, as Arte discovered when his boot splashed down into the half-foot deep puddle of freezing water collecting on the other side. Eventually the water would crest the small stone and begin flowing again, water overcoming all other elements as it always did, but the shock of cold halfway up his calf was not welcome.

"Keep moving, Jimmy." Arte encouraged, watching as the boy tiredly pushed away from the wall. The sudden lethargy alarmed Gordon just a little, and as the tunnel rose slightly, opening and taking them out of the stream, Arte called for the boy to stop. He could hear the distinct change in the makeup of the ground from the squelching of saturated sand, to the scrape of dry sediment. Once he could, Arte set the little girl down again and knelt on his good knee to take the lantern from Jimmy. Once more the light played over the splash of blood on the boy's arm.

Arte felt his stomach drop when he discovered that the blood was the result of a sharp bone breaking through flesh. Shock, Arte realized. Both children were probably suffering from it, and Jimmy had the added danger of blood loss. Arte felt the boy's uninjured hand come to rest on his shoulder and a moment later the boy was leaning against him, Jimmy's head starting to droop. By the time the boy passed out, Arte had already put an arm around his waist and simply held onto him, his ear pressed to the boy's chest, pleased to hear the heartbeat, fast but strong enough.

Not for long, Arte thought. The children needed warm blankets and food, beds to sleep in, and time to recover from what had undoubtedly been a nightmare. But, none of those things existed in this god-forsaken cave.

* * *

 _The earthquake had done terrible things to the Doctor's lab. When Boy finally crawled out from beneath the heavy work table that had offered him shelter, he began to weep at what he saw. All but the vials that had been safely packed away in crates under the very same table was shattered and spilled, eking through the cracks in the table, or puddling on the ornate rugs the Doctor preferred to the sandy ground._

 _The Doctor's favorite toy, the turn table that made music had been destroyed. The base crushed on one corner by a giant stone, the metal funnel from which the sound came was dented and torn away from the machine. The disc that hid the sound had shattered, sitting like a desolate pie destroyed by blackbirds._

 _The medicines, the experiments...his precious toys. All that the Doctor had worried over was gone._

 _Even Walter was gone, missing from the little cage he had been in when the quake began. As Boy began to gather the shattered pieces of his hopes for the future, storing what little that remained under the sturdy work table, his only joy came in knowing that the Doctor had been very far away from the caves when the quake struck. The Doctor and his friend, Voltaire, they weren't due back until late that night. And Boy would have known if the Doctor had been in the cave._

 _Just as he had been informed about the new invader to his home. The invader! This reminded him about the patients and with a shout Boy hustled out of the lab and into the recovery room, terrified of what he would find._

 _Fourteen beds were within. Nothing more than mattresses and blankets set on the dirt floors, and until recently only three had been occupied._

 _One of those three was buried under rubble. The other two were quite clearly empty._

* * *

By the time Artemus reached the second big cavern the candle in the lantern was down to a trembling puddle of wax, the wick bravely swaying in time to Gordon's footsteps. There was little he could do about it, his arms full of unconscious children, literally tied to his chest and back. Via the dim light he could see that the second 'room' wasn't as large as the first had been, and there was only one option for travel. The opening straight ahead once more showed signs of human tampering and Arte could feel the breeze out of it.

He crossed the distance of wet, slopping sand with heavy plodding steps, his body one solid ache. Stopping at the opening that would undoutbedly lead him even further into the matrix of caves, he let the delicious breeze play over his face.

Would Jim have turned back by this point, he wondered? He'd passed ten or so alternate routes, opting against each in favor of following the path of the water. Could any one of those alternates have lead him to his partner, or to a shortcut out of this entrance to the underworld? How could the cave system be so elaborate? So thoroughly pockmarked by nature and by man's influence and yet remarkably, under the circumstances, stable?

Loosening the bindings of the rope that he had used to tie the children to his body, Arte carefully lowered first one sleeping child, then the other to the ground. He sipped from his canteen, rationing what was left for the sake of the children then worked to replace the dying candle in the lantern, careful to light the new one before the other sputtered out.

Once the lantern sat squarely on a pile of scooped and sculpted sand Arte looked to the children, checking on the young girl first. She was cold, her eyes sluggish to respond when he forced them open, but breathing steadily and resistant to having her eyes pried open. A good enough sign he decided, and removed his jacket, wrapping it around the girl before turning to Jimmy.

He was surprised to see slivers of light colored eyes glittering in the candle light, the boy watching him silently. Arte winced sympathetically. He'd stopped to take a closer look at the broken arm and do what he could to fix it. Neither part of the plan was going to feel very good and he had hoped to do them both while the boy was still unconscious.

"Jimmy..." Arte began, guiding the boy into a sitting position before he turned to start tearing at his own sleeve. The moment his hands stopped supporting the boy, however, Jimmy slumped back toward the ground. Alarmed Arte lunged forward, catching the boy and quickly pressing his fingers to the youth's carotid artery. His pulse was there, still beating strong but fast, and Arte felt the boy's chest expand with a slow breath. Yet the eyes were still half open.

Perhaps the boy slept that way, Arte thought, something familiar tickling at the back of his brain. He eventually found a way to prop Jimmy against his good knee and finished tearing off the sleeve of his shirt. He used the remaining unused candle and the cloth to make a loose splint over the break, pressing the bone back through the skin. The young man shifted and groaned in his sleep but did not wake. The girl was still unconscious as well, but breathing and shivering. A sign that the body was fighting for warmth on its own. A good sign, as far as Arte understood it.

He fastened both children to his person the way he had before and rose, trying to ignore the painful stiffness in his swelling knee. His ear and head throbbed as well, the ear that had impacted the wall, but the pain dimmed as he stepped once more into the draft of the breeze and entered the next tunnel, wider still than those before it.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead!" He quoted to the stones, then continued the speech to an adoring audience of one. "In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility:"

* * *

 _"But when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger..."_

 _The words echoed through the sound magnifying tunnels that the mice used, rattling in Boy's ears, and shaking his nerve soundly. He was so accustomed to being alone. To only hearing the voices of the children, or the Doctor. This new voice was boisterous, and loud, and far too confident. It sounded dangerous, and yet there was humor._

 _Not the zealot like laughter of the Doctor, but a different kind of humor. The kind that maybe laughed in the face of danger, or perhaps only laughed at...no WITH the insecurities of man._

 _The voice was vibrant. And educated. The accent crisp and strange to Boy's ears. He listened, pausing in his work._

 _"Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; then lend the eye a terrible aspect..."_

 _The voice paused, a strange theatrical growl entering the tone. "Let...pry..." The voice gasped, sounding now very much like the Doctor. Focused, passionate, determined. "...through the portage of the head like the brass cannon! Let the brow o'erwhelm it as fearfully as doth a galled rock o'erhang and jutty his confounded base...Swill'ed...gah!"_

 _The voice stopped, and Boy could hear loud panting come through the holes in the rock. Holes he had dug, and blasted, with carefully packed powder and nitrate. Holes and tunnels made to aid him in protecting his home._

 _He hadn't thought about the earth quaking. The shaking turning his dream to so much rubble._

 _And he was wasting time! Precious time, that the Doctor would not like wasted._

 _Boy suddenly hated the voice. Hated it for distracting him, for causing him to pause in his duties. He hated the voice, and he hated the newcomer who had brought the quake and destruction with him._

 _No...he had work to do. To fix things. To make it ready for the Doctor. Because even though the newest boy was missing, the boy that Boy knew was so very important, he had still succeeded at capturing the ENEMY._

 _The Doctor could still be pleased about that._

* * *

An unexpected divot had stalled the soliloquy. He'd stepped before the lantern had lit the depression in the earth and twisted his already painful knee. The flash of white heat had upset his balance and it had taken everything in his power to keep his feet and avoid crushing the children against either the rock walls or the floor.

He'd gritted his teeth and found his balance and waited for the throbbing to stop, the whole time cursing his partner. He was sick of this cave, sick of the darkness, and sick of the worry. Why Jim had felt the need to traipse off into this god forsaken hole with nothing but a sixteen-year-old for back-up confounded him. Even Orrin would have made a decent partner in exploration and might have ensured West's safe return, thus preventing Gordon from ever having to enter this ridiculous cave in the first place.

Then he'd be warm, safe, confined to a well appointed varnish car where he could solve the mystery of the sudden appearance of children with his mind, and logic, and plain genius. He wouldn't be the sole adult responsible for two young lives, and he wouldn't be once more plotting the date of his retirement because...dammit he was told old for this sort of nonsense!

But what choice did he have...?

"Shakespeare..." Arte sighed, finally, gritting his teeth as he took a careful, testing step forward on his bad leg. The joint held his weight, barely, and he quickly took another step forward, "...is inappropriate for this misadventure, children." He mused, knowing he was talking to himself, but entertaining the idea that he wasn't necessarily going insane if he was doing it for the sake of the little ones. "What do you say to a little Lewis Carrol, hmm? Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths...ah...they outgrabe!"


	3. Chapter 3

Following the stream had become a good, reliable mantra. Even if the walls seemed closer, the darkness deeper than the candle could penetrate, the stream was an undeniable sign of hope. It had to stem from somewhere, Arte reasoned, some source from beyond the cave. Streams came from mountains, he told himself. Mountains that were capped with snow. Snow that came from the heavens. Somewhere that stream was fed by the outside world.

When the tunnel unexpectedly split in a Y Arte automatically followed the path of the stream without a second glance. A dozen yards later he encountered a wall. A jumble of stone and mud had filled the tunnel from floor to ceiling. There were gaps, crevices, the stream still merrily trickling through the rock, following a path that it was clearly accustomed to, but there was room for the water, and the water only.

As he stared numbly at the wee cracks that allowed neither light, nor perceivable air flow through, Arte felt his spirits drop.

Man was not meant for darkness, he thought, turning around and carefully working his way back to the source of the split. Man was meant for sunshine, daylight, bright breezy days, and brilliant, star filled nights. These caves were meant for bats and bugs and all the slimy, ugly things that crawled about in the shadows, for fear of being seen and squashed in the light.

Not for him, and certainly not for the children.

By the time he returned to the Y Arte had to stop and lean against the upright column of rock separating the tunnels. The alternate opening at least still boasted a flow of air and Arte took bracing breaths, quelling the panic that had begun to close the back of his throat, before he stepped forward again.

At first the tunnel narrowed, forcing Arte into a painful hunch that put the weight of his young burdens squarely on his thighs and weak knee. The pain was worse than he expected, and he slowed his pace dramatically, moving as though he carried pure nitrate. The breeze became audible, starting with a whistle that became a gale as the walls closed in. Arte was beginning to imagine, with dread, the tiny cannon sized hole that was going to end his journey, the backtracking he would be forced to do. All the other discouraging options he had yet to try.

He hadn't bothered to count the hours he'd been in the cave, hoping that they would be inconsequential once he was outside again. Now he wondered how long they had been trapped.

Before he'd finished the calculations the tunnel opened again and to Arte's relief the ambient light changed drastically. The tunnel expanded into a cavern that was the smallest of the three he had discovered so far, but offered the most choices. Five pick-marked openings, all of them dark but one. The one that fed the stream of air into the cave. The way out...it had to be. Arte lurched forward, no longer needing the candle to light the way.

The breeze was sharper, colder, and Arte felt himself shiver as he stepped into the first faint filter of sunlight he had seen in too long. It glittered off the moisture on the natural cave walls and filtered through a film of dust in the air. The warmth of the beam of light overwhelmed the chill the closer Arte got to the egress and when he finally stumbled to a halt at the base of a steep incline of fallen rock he pushed his palm into the shaft of light and was surprised at the sudden, extreme heat it provided.

It was daylight still, up above. He would have time to climb out, to orient himself and perhaps find the supplies, or at least gather firewood and set up a camp for the night. He need only climb up to the exit.

Taking a deep breath Arte leaned into the shoulder of the first massive rock, lifted his left leg and planted his foot, pressing up against the weight of tired muscles, the mass of both children, and hefting himself up a foot and a half. He found purchase above his head, straining shoulder muscles that had all but frozen against the dig of the rope, and pulling until he could wedge his right foot into a solid toe hold, and seek another hold with his left. One foot, then one hand at a time, careful not to crush the young girl against the stone as she began to rustle in the confines of the rope and his coat, Arte struggled up the final obstacle keeping him from that which he so desperately desired.

Freedom.

Day light.

He was breathing hard, struggling against the debilitating pain in his knee when he was first able to press his face into the opening. He expected to find blue skies, clouds, trees, perhaps a stream bed flowing past or snowy ground dotted with pines and redwoods. The light was blinding him and it took a moment to get high enough, swinging his right leg over the final boulder, before he could see beyond it...into a room.

If it weren't for the rock walls he would have thought he'd just climbed through the window of a cabin. Rugs covered the floors, overlapping to create an island of woven color. The light that wasn't sunlight after all, emanated from several bright kerosene lanterns mounted to the stone ceiling by bolts that had been driven into the rock. Phalanges of reflective, shining metal had been fastened around the source of the flame to reflect the light creating the powerful and enticing beam. The room was warm and inviting, laid out with a dinner table and chairs, a bed in the corner, a heavy brass tub full of water and a chest for clothes.

A solitary door, set into the carved stone walls, served as the only other exit for the room and it was made of heavy oak and brass, with iron bars in the window. Probably locked. It looked like the door to a jail cell.

This was a trap, Arte thought. A mouse trap, a man trap. The cheese? Precisely the sort of thing that a weary traveler would want most after hiking arduously through the caves. There was food on the table, but it looked like it had been there for most of the day. The water in the bath was clean looking, but not hot. A fire might have once glowed from the grates of the pot belly stove, but it was dead now, untended for several hours.

The earthquake, Arte thought, must have disrupted the routine of whoever tended this place. It had done some damage to the room, knocking the bed away from the wall, and the chest of drawers cockeyed. Water had spilled from the tub soaking the rugs around it and one of the chairs had been knocked over.

As he swung his other leg over the barrier Arte noted the ladder leading down into the room, but didn't use it. There was a scales balancing in his head, weighed down on the one side by suspicion and doubt, and on the other by fatigue, pain and need.

He was hungry, and the children had to be also. He was thirsty and in pain, and needed to take the time to look after his injuries and those of the children. He was tired, so very tired...but this room had all the earmarks of the sort of accommodations that Dr. Miguelito Loveless tended to provide. Undoubtedly the food or the water would be poisoned or drugged, a trigger somewhere on the entrance was likely to sound an alarm and close off the tunnel the minute he stepped through.

It could mean capture, but it could also mean survival, this room. And the restless girl and boy now moving about and moaning against him were tipping the scales whether he liked it or not.

Arte craned his neck to look over the round stone entrance, then down the length of the ladder checking for strings, levers or notches. But whatever trap was likely to close over the entrance once he stepped into the room was invisible, as was the trigger that set it off. Finely crafted.

"I expected no less..." Arte muttered to himself, then finally made his decision, stepping down on the first rung of the ladder, turning and descending into the room carefully and quietly.

He was about to step straight down to the floor but thought better of it and carefully stepped as far to the side of the base of the ladder as he could manage, eyeing the stone entrance above.

No alarms sounded. No barrier snapped down over the stone hole.

Carefully Arte knelt on his good knee and pulled back the rug on which the ladder sat and smirked with satisfaction when he saw the rectangular outline of a pressure plate into which the ladder itself had been planted. It might not be the only trigger in the room but it was the main trigger, Arte thought. Leaving the plate uncovered, Arte pushed himself back to his feet, turning as he did. Or at least he tried to.

His knee, apparently, had had enough. He managed to rise only a few feet before he felt something snap, and white hot pain shot through his leg and up his spine. He let out a cry and desperately reached out to catch himself on the ladder with his left hand, his right swinging back and slapping against the stone wall behind him. The pain was overwhelming, bursting into his head with the rapid pulse of his heart beat and storming against his equilibrium. He wouldn't be upright for long he realized and lurched toward the bed, digging into the knots that held the children against him, and lowering both to the surface of the bed. Jimmy he managed to lay on the bed gently. The girl flopped with more force than he intended, moments before he crumpled to the floor and once more into darkness.

* * *

 _An alarm sounded. Not a very loud alarm, as the bell had probably been dented or warped by the earthquake. But Boy heard the sound as it altered the environment around him and stopped in his work, trying to remember what the sound meant._

 _He had forgotten about the trap in all the excitement. The room that lay in wait for the curious and lost, for the experiment subjects that weren't lured in by other means. The room that had successfully trapped Mr. West and Miss Cherry. Someone else had entered the room and Boy wondered who._

 _The voice he had heard earlier, of course, Boy chided himself, turning back to the rough handled broom and dust pan, collecting the last of the broken glass and dumping it into the large refuse pail. He had returned the lab to some semblance of its former glory, and returned the various machines to a glimmer of their former function. There was only one crate remaining of the Doctor's precious Fons adulescentia, the vital ingredient in the formula._

 _Boy could only hope that he had managed to re-calibrate the machines appropriately, and watched with intelligent, mismatched eyes as the swell of light blue liquid bubbled in one beaker, swirled through several feet of tubing, and dripped languidly into a second. There it mixed with another liquid that was black, viscous and always kept as ice cold as possible._

 _These two churned together, the one causing the other to constantly expand and contract until something the color of the sky at midnight funneled into a series of graduated cylinders, tripping down into a wide, rectangular receptacle. Here the greatest amount of heat and pressure was applied, constantly boiling the mixture, sending a backwards cascade of chemical mist upward into a wide filter. There the mist formed and crystallized, the crystals cleared every five hours by Boy's own hand, and deposited into a shallow vat of the Doctor's_ _Fons adulescentia_ _where they dispersed again, mixing and changing the precious and mysterious liquid into something else. Something more important. Something that could be used for good or for evil._

 _Boy had seen what it could do. He had seen it work miraculously, and kill just as miraculously._

 _What if HE used it? What if Boy employed the first of the new doses and gave it to his newest visitor before the Doctor arrived. Would then the Doctor's expected ire be reduced? Would then the Doctor be delighted and overlook the loss of the precious new patients?_

 _The idea appealed to Boy, and he licked warped lips in anticipation. A few more hours, he thought, only a few more hours and he could test this first new batch. Just in time..._

* * *

Arte was in a happy place. A very happy place that contained a memory of a gathering at the White House. A gathering to which he had brought Louise, the thirty-one-year old daughter he had only recently been reunited with, and Hannah, Louise' older sister. The gathering had been bright and gay and filled with notable scholars of the capital and surrounding areas. It had done what he had hoped it would, opening his daughter's world and giving her and her sister the opportunity to meet with professionals in their field, to establish contacts and hopefully begin their journey into a profession that under most circumstances had no consideration for the fairer sex. Arte had no doubt that Louise and Hannah were well on their way to changing that.

Fatherhood had been a foreign concept to Gordon, especially in light of the fact that he had never known his own father. Yet this year's missadventures seemed to be constantly placing him in that role. It had begun with an orphaned Ute child and now he had Louise. And something else, something nagging at the back of his mind. Fatherhood and the name Artemus Gordon (or for that matter, James West) had never belonged in the same sentence together and yet..here he was. Here they were.

When Arte woke, the topic of fatherhood was right there at the brink of his consciousness, gradually overridden by various sensations. Cold...and wet, his face was damp and chilled and the rest of his body uncomfortably laid out on something hard and unforgiving. There was a consistent weight over most of his chest and lower body, a little heavier against his legs, where the occasional movement jarred him with pain radiating from his right leg. And another pain, a repetitive pain that jolted near his left ear, over and over again.

Arte cleared his throat and worked at opening his eyes. His head was beginning to pound, his throat thick and raw as if he'd been talking for days without end. He vaguely remembered something about Shakespeare and then something else about Lewis Carroll. Then he remembered what the other memory had been and jerked his head upright, desperately blinking the fog from his eyes.

The little girl knelt on his right side, a wet, stained cloth in her left hand, concerned brown eyes peering into Arte's from less than five feet away. "You awake now Mister?"

Arte moved his hands, fished them out from under the blanket and carefully pushed the girl back a few feet with a gentle palm against her side. He nodded in response to the girl's question and pushed himself up onto his elbows to find the young girl sitting crosslegged and pressed against his bad knee.

"You was sleepin' on the floor, Mister." The girl offered, concern, fear and uncertainty filling round, brown eyes. "I woulda put you on the bed but..." The girl looked sadly up at the surface of the mattress, then back to Arte. He followed her gaze and saw that she had tried to tear the blanket off the bed, but stopped when Jimmy's unconscious form got in the way. Instead she had tugged the second, folded blanket off the foot of the bed and it now lay over his legs.

"S'alright." Arte said, trying to force reassurance into a voice that sounded rough and groggy. "I'm...I'll be alright. Are you alright, Miss..."

"Mm..Susie." The girl said, drawing her knees up. "I'm Susie, but I don't know who he is." She said tossing her thumb over her shoulder.

Arte smirked a little at the boy and said, "That's alright, we met earlier. My name is Arte."

"Hi, Arte." Susie greeted softly, then scooted a little closer to Arte's chest, laying a hand against the blanket. "Do you wanna get up now?"

Arte looked around the still brightly lit room, considered his options then nodded. "Yes, I do think that would be best."

Under his direction the little girl went to one of the chairs set at the table and managed to drag it over to the bed. Arte was able to muscle his way up into the chair, not trusting the heavy, throbbing pain in his knee to support his weight, and moved from the chair to the bedside where he was able to sit up and examine his other charge.

Susie had apparently been busy. The pain in his ear had been caused by her ministrations with a wet napkin. She had used it to clean up Jimmy's face and hands, and her own, and the cloth still clutched in her hand was now stained with blood. His own. She still wore the mud stained clothing and she might have tried to comb her hair, but a nasty looking clump of a knot arrested the attempt near her shoulders.

"How long have I been sleeping?"

"Not very long." Susie offered brightly, taking a step towards the bed and carefully lifting a cup full of water to the seat of the chair. She dipped her cloth into the vessel, and brought it back towards Arte's pulsing head. He intercepted the cloth gently and felt at the crust of blood that had collected around a split in the arch of his ear, and caked through his sideburns.

"Your ear was bleedin'," Susie offered, "but I made it stop. And cleaned off some of the dirt."

"That was smart..." Arte muttered, his voice betraying some of the surprise he felt as he swiped the cloth at his ear a few times. She looked young, had to be very young, and yet showed the sense of a child much older, even of an adult. "How old are you?"

Susie thought for a minute then held up her hand with all of her fingers extended.

Only five! It couldn't possibly be, and yet there she was, looking frightened and alone, just like any other five year old. Arte glanced over at the boy, watching his chest rise and fall, wondering how old he was. It took him a moment to realize that Susie was staring at him expectantly. He gave her a look of askance in return and Susie prompted, "How old are you?"

Arte pursed his lips in annoyance and found he had to actually stop to think about the number. "Old." He said finally, and the face he made prompted a giggle from Susie.

Arte scanned the room, noting once again the food on the table. "Did you try to eat or drink anything?" He asked, and was met with solemn, shaking head. She looked hungry. They both had to be. Arte sighed and said, "I hate to tell ya, but we would be better off not eating that food."

"The food is safe!" Said a voice that caused Susie to jolt, and Arte to turn sharply toward the door. The area beyond the barred window was dark but the voice had clearly come from there. And it wasn't a voice he recognized.

"Who is out there?" Arte called and reluctantly used the chair to get to his feet, barely using his wounded leg at all to cross to the door. Susie remained near the bed, watching the door and Arte guardedly.

The speaker hesitated, drawing in a breath, but not using it. "The food is safe." He finally said again. "And the water is clean. No poisons or potions of any kind."

Almost as if the mysterious voice could read his mind, Arte thought, looking to the laden table, the pitchers that likely contained water and wine.

"So then you mean me no harm?" Arte asked, using the singular article instead of the plural, not sure if the speaker had yet noticed the children.

"Oh no! You are a guest." The voice insisted, sounding pleased to have the opportunity to give the assurance.

"A guest!?" Arte asked, his voice deceptively friendly. He reached out a hand, and rattled the bars of the window, reassuring himself that the knob-less door was indeed secure. "Why then is the door locked?" He asked. "And don't tell me it's for my own safety because, frankly my friend, I have had enough of such pointless reassurances. This is a trap, yes?"

The voice hesitated a moment then replied, "Yes..."

"Set by none other than the...narcissistic Miguelito Loveless, yes."

" _Doctor_ Miguelito Lovel-"

"And this _doctor_ is responsible for all the bizarre appearances of children in the river valley, and for this depressing cave of wonders, and has all manner of dark and evil plans set for me and my partner eh?" Arte ranted, moving with painful slowness away from the door and once more sitting on the edge of the bed where Susie still stood silently. Moments after he'd settled he could feel Susie's weight once more leaning against him, her hands clutching his wrist lightly.

"The Doctor does good." The voice said finally, filled with outraged hatred. "He's going to save California, and then save the world, from the evils of man. And I don't know anything about your partner, but you will be the next to benefit from his genius, make no mistake."

"The _Doctor_ is a mad man! And the only benefit that-" Arte was cut off by a distant slam that told him that his audience had moved on. It was just as well. He didn't have the energy left to be eloquently defiant. Why not save it for the main act, Arte ol' boy?

"His voice is scary." Susie told him. TOLD him, as if she knew what she was talking about. As if she'd heard the voice before and it had unconsciously struck fear into her.

Arte bent forward and lifted Susie onto his lap where she quickly settled, her arms going about his waist, her cheek settling against his chest. Arte tightened his arms around her, the action feeling familiar. "Don't worry my dear. He can't get to us in here. And we still have a way out, see..." Arte said quietly, pointing up to the still open hole in the rock wall.

"For now, I would imagine that we're all hungry, and dirty, and tired, am I right?"

Brown eyes met his, and a tousled head nodded. Arte looked to where Jimmy lay, still unconscious. He reached a hand over and touched the boy's face, feeling the beginning of a fever. He pushed back the tattered edges of the sleeve he had used to secure Jimmy's broken arm and winced at the red pallor of his skin. The arm needed to be disinfected and properly set. Arte could feel his knee swollen tight in his pant leg, and all of them needed something warm and nourishing before too long.

"Right then." Arte said, looking to pot belly stove, "Let's see if we can't build up that fire."


End file.
